


Ocean Take Me Under

by octoberburns



Series: Salmon-Swift, its Captain, and Her People [2]
Category: Original Work
Genre: Autistic Character, Established Relationship, F/F, Face-Sitting, Fantasy, Light Dom/sub, Multi, Ocean Metaphors, Orcs, Sex Toys, Threesome - F/F/F, Trans Character
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-11
Updated: 2019-08-11
Packaged: 2020-08-13 23:51:11
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,476
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20182774
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/octoberburns/pseuds/octoberburns
Summary: The crew ofSalmon-Swiftspends its winters in Baraag. In the privacy of her own home, Vaar is not its captain—and she does not give the orders.





	Ocean Take Me Under

**Author's Note:**

> July's monthly request. Thanks again to Ashley, Alex, and the rest of my supporters for making this possible!
> 
> This month's prompt was... well, pretty much exactly what you'd expect. This is a sequel to When the Storm Breaks; if you haven't read it yet, you'll want to check that out first.

The windows of Vaar’s home have glass in them: tiny diamond-shaped panes, bubbled and distorted, like looking through the waters of the Haaol Sea.

It’s a marker for how well her trading business has done since she came to Baraag—both a testimony to the profit of her voyages and a sign of prestige to entice wealthy investors—and so she judged it worth the expense, despite the frivolity of the gesture. In her offices, on the ground floor, she paid extra to have the glass tinted in varying shades of blue and green, from deep and nearly opaque at the bottom of the windows to almost clear at the top; on the upper floor, where she keeps her personal apartments, the glass is plain and uncoloured.

Ruulo is peering through it now, leaning on the sill, her face nearly touching the window in her effort to see through the warp of the glass to the darkness outside. Vaar has been ignoring both her accounts and her wine for the last five minutes in favour of watching her, taking quiet pleasure in the sway of her skirts and the movement of her hands and the pale glow of her hair in the candlelight.

“The snow’s heavy tonight,” Ruulo says. “I don’t think it’s stopped at all for the last three hours.”

There is an uncharacteristic note of anxiety in her voice, and it draws Hishnak’s attention from the stew she’s finishing off. “It’s not like you to be worried, kitten,” she says. “The cold doesn’t normally bother you.”

“Oh, I don’t mind the cold,” Ruulo says. “It’s only—I don’t want to be snowed in.”

Ruulo is a Northern orc, pale-skinned and light-eyed; she grew up in the forests north of Kagar, across the Haaol from Baraag. She’s more at ease in the bitter frosts than even Hishnak, a Baraag native, and certainly more than Vaar, who hails originally from the distant islands in the southwest where snow falls only on the highest peaks—so at ease, in fact, that she hasn’t yet adjusted to the milder winters of her new home.

“In the twenty years I’ve lived here, I’ve never been snowed in,” Vaar says. “Baraag’s snows aren’t so severe as Kagar’s.”

Ruulo flashes her a smile—Vaar catalogues it: grateful, but distracted—but turns back to the window all the same. Watching her, Vaar can see the outlines of her emotions, but she cannot guess at their source; in that way, other people are often opaque to her, even when she knows them well. Her gaze shifts to Hishnak, seeking a cue: Hishnak always seems able to grasp the threads of meaning that escape her.

Now is no exception. “Kirug will be fine, kitten,” she says, and Vaar feels the satisfaction of understanding what had eluded her: of course—Ruulo is concerned for her child, eleven months old and still unused to long separation from his mother.

“I hope so,” Ruulo says. She’s still peering through the glass at the snowfall outside.

Hishnak scrapes the last from her bowl, swallows down her wine, and pushes the dishes aside, getting to her feet and crossing the small sitting room to draw Ruulo away from the window. “He will. Even if we did somehow end up stuck here for another couple of days. Bridish knows how to handle a baby.”

The woman Hishnak names is her eldest sister, a mother of four and a frequent caretaker for all of her assorted nieces and nephews. In the six months since Ruulo came to live in their family’s hall, her own child has been accepted wholeheartedly into that number, and Bridish has often looked after Kirug whenever Ruulo spends the night at Vaar’s.

Ruulo sags a little against Hishnak’s touch, but she turns without protest back into the room. “I know,” she says. “It’s just… overnight is one thing, but I don’t think he’s ready for days at a time yet.”

“He doesn’t need to be. Vaar’s right, we don’t get that much snow here,” Hishnak says, the gentle press of her hand guiding the smaller woman past the central hearth to the benches and table where Vaar is still seated. “But he’ll have to get used to it sometime. The ice will be breaking up in a couple months, and then the _Salmon_ will be sailing. Think of it as practice.”

It’s clear that Ruulo knows Hishnak is right, but there remains an unhappy set to her mouth that Vaar dislikes, no matter how she understands it. As _Salmon-Swift_’s captain, it’s her responsibility to plan for the future—but this is a future that can wait.

“Ruulo,” she says, reaching out to her; it catches her attention immediately, as it always does when Vaar uses her name directly. Vaar gestures invitation; this time, the smile Ruulo gives her is easier, and she takes Vaar’s hand without hesitation and allows herself to be pulled onto her lap.

It’s been more than half a year since Ruulo took passage on her ship, but Vaar still finds herself astonished at the way the younger woman sinks into her touch, the willing give of her body, the simplicity with which she asks for and takes what she wants. She cannot wind her fingers into Vaar’s hair as she would Hishnak’s—Vaar keeps it braided and pinned up, even at home—but Ruulo grips the back of her head and pulls her into a kiss, the softness of her lips at odds, as it always is, with the insistent tug of her hunger.

Vaar knows where she’s meant to put her hands. Ruulo’s hips are beautifully round under her fingers—smaller than her own, softer than Hishnak’s—and she shifts eagerly into Vaar’s grip, kissing her all the harder. As Ruulo presses towards her, her knees settling onto the bench on either side of Vaar’s lap, Vaar tips her head back and with a shuddery sigh against Ruulo’s mouth she allows herself to be lost in it.

When Ruulo pulls back at last she’s breathing hard; Vaar, by contrast, cannot seem to remember how to breathe at all. Her lips are sensitive, feeling every shift in the air like a caress. She has only just managed to open her eyes when Ruulo leans in again, pressing fluttery kisses down her neck, her short tusks scraping against Vaar’s pulse. Vaar makes an involuntary sound in her throat, and feels Ruulo’s answering laughter muffled against her skin.

There’s an echoing chuckle from Hishnak. “She’s got you good, darling,” she says. Vaar opens her eyes—when did she close them?—and rolls her head to the side to see Hishnak watching them with fond eyes and a smirk on her mouth. She’s sitting on the bench across the table, leaning back against the wall, her arms folded over her chest and her legs stretched out in front of her in a posture of thorough relaxation. She looks entirely satisfied with her lot in life.

Ruulo giggles again, lifting her lips from Vaar’s throat to say, “Did you want to join us?”

Vaar can see the shape of Hishnak’s response before she makes it. “Oh, no,” she says, flipping her hand dismissively. “Don’t worry about me, kitten. I like looking at you together.”

Ruulo makes a pleased noise and returns her mouth to Vaar’s neck, teeth scraping over her skin. Vaar’s eyes slide closed once more against sudden dizziness. She can feel Ruulo’s smile against her pulse, the sharp points of her teeth and the hard press of her tusks, the deep sucking pressure that’s going to leave an invisible bruise on Vaar’s dark skin. Ruulo works her over without pause, until Vaar lets out an unintended moan, when she returns triumphantly to her lips for an insistent, open-mouthed kiss. Vaar has forgotten how to breathe again. She will drown in Ruulo, as sure as she will one day be taken by the sea.

Finally Ruulo draws away again, panting into the space between their lips, her hips shifting and rocking against Vaar’s hands. “Let’s go to bed,” she says, her lovely voice low and quiet with heat.

Hishnak’s voice breaks through Vaar’s daze. “I guess that’s my cue,” she says cheerfully, swinging to her feet, and then before either of them can react she has stepped around the table and scooped Ruulo up into her strong arms. With a startled peal of laughter, Ruulo throws her arms over Hishnak’s shoulders, nuzzling into her jaw.

Hishnak smiles down at Vaar. “You good?”

Abruptly Vaar finds she has control of her limbs again. “Yes,” she says. “Go ahead. I’ll follow.”

With another understanding smile Hishnak strides from the sitting room, ducking her head under the doorway as she goes, still carrying Ruulo. Vaar can hear Ruulo’s giggling, her delighted yelp as Hishnak throws her down onto the bed, the muffled sound of her voice disappearing into a kiss. She listens, just breathing for a moment, and then with a flex of her hands she stands and follows her lovers into the bedroom.

Hishnak has Ruulo on her back on Vaar’s furs, but she doesn’t press her down in the way that she would Vaar. Instead they surge into each other, Hishnak using her greater size to keep Ruulo contained beneath her body while Ruulo arches against her and wraps her legs around Hishnak’s hips as well as her skirts allow. They are a study in restless motion, flowing into each other in a way that is at once combative and perfectly in synch.

As Vaar watches, Ruulo does something with the shift of her hips that sets Hishnak to growling. “Oh, you little tease,” she says, biting at Ruulo’s lips.

Ruulo tips her head back into it, laughing against Hishnak’s mouth. “And what do you call what your hand is doing?”

Vaar cannot see Hishnak’s hand. It has disappeared under Ruulo’s skirt.

“Are you saying you want me to stop?” Hishnak says, her arm shifting in a way that makes Ruulo gasp.

“Oh—don’t you dare.”

Hishnak starts wrestling Ruulo out of her clothing, and Ruulo responds in kind, both of them constantly getting in the way of each other’s hands and laughing for it. On the sidelines, Vaar can feel herself drawing back together; in the observation of her lovers’ bodies, she remembers where her own begins and ends.

She likes watching them with each other: Ruulo and Hishnak are playful together in a way that neither of them is with her. Vaar has never been suited to that style of flirtation—had always felt her emotions too intensely and too expansively for her body to contain, until she had to teach herself stone-faced command to have any hope of untangling them at all. Playfulness, for her, is self-conscious and awkward, not a relaxation of restraint but a performance she cannot comfortably embody. Her control does not come in the ocean’s infinite gradations from calm blue-green to storm-wracked black; it is absolute, or it is absent.

Not so for Hishnak, whose touch is mischievous and hurried on the pale roundness of Ruulo’s thighs as she strips her of her apron-skirt and dress; nor for Ruulo, fumbling a little in her eagerness to pull Hishnak’s tunic from her body. They are both of them half exposed, Hishnak bare-chested and barefoot with her trousers riding low on her hips, Ruulo in nothing but a linen chemise, her long braid coming unbound and sticking to her neck. Hishnak bends to kiss her there, sucking and biting her way down her collar, and Ruulo makes a low moan and buries her hands in the wild tangle of Hishnak’s auburn hair.

Ruulo is gasping when she finally pulls away, her pale throat and chest marked with blooming green bruises in a way that never shows on Vaar’s skin or even Hishnak’s. Hishnak is no less fascinated by it than Vaar. “Stars, you’re gorgeous,” she says, ghosting her fingers over the marks.

“Then kiss me again,” Ruulo retorts, and even though her breathlessness she manages to sound demanding.

“Mm. Hold that thought,” Hishnak says, and lifts her head to Vaar. Vaar is caught in her dark gaze, seen all the way down to her core. “Come here, darling.”

She obeys.

It’s been ten years since Vaar and Hishnak first began sharing their bed. The meeting of their mouths is familiar and hot, the ease between them something that has been won by time; they have no need for questions or hesitations, Hishnak’s hands on her body sure and able as she begins stripping Vaar of her clothing. She doesn’t look to what her fingers are doing or even break away from the kiss, keeping Vaar pressed close to her as she bares her unerringly, piece by piece. It is, in its own way, another invitation to drown, and Vaar accepts it willingly.

She is naked before Hishnak lets her go—still standing at the side of the bed, fully exposed under her lovers’ eyes. Hishnak is sitting back, self-satisfied, the spread of her knees making the fullness of her erection clear against the line of her trousers. Ruulo, kneeling on the furs, is watching them both with a hungry pleasure in her eyes—wanting them, wanting what they have with each other, but absent any of the jealousy that could turn to resentment. Vaar imagines she can feel the currents of their eyes on her skin, vulnerability crashing over her, and finds herself prickling with heat and anticipation at the knowledge that she is utterly theirs.

“Perfect,” Hishnak says, her voice nearly a growl as her gaze rakes up Vaar’s body, the thickness of her thighs, the width of her hips, her stout waist and full breasts and broad shoulders. A scar curls over the left side of her ribcage and halfway down her stomach, pale as a breaking wave on the deep green of her skin; Hishnak runs her finger along it, and Vaar shivers. “Come on, darling. Up where we can reach you.”

Vaar allows herself to be pulled, almost stumbling as she crawls onto the bed, settling at the centre of the mattress on her back. Immediately Ruulo has straddled her hips, gripping her forearms to press her down into the furs. “Hello,” she says, an impish smile on her lips, and then she’s kissing her again and Vaar has lost the thread of anything else, her whole world reduced to Ruulo’s body against hers. Ruulo wants everything of her, and all she can think to do is give.

She nearly whines when Ruulo pulls away at last, but Ruulo soothes her with the stroke of her cheek. “Shh,” she says. “I’m here. Do you want something in your mouth?”

Vaar licks her lips. She is too dizzy with desire to open her eyes. “Please,” she whispers.

Ruulo’s voice is dancing with laughter. “How about my cunt?”

It’s all Vaar can do not to whine again.

“Shh,” Ruulo repeats, and kisses her briefly, and then she has clambered up to kneel on the pillows, her knees to either side of Vaar’s head, her body facing into the room so she can keep both Hishnak and Vaar in view. She settles delicately over Vaar’s mouth, and Vaar circles her broad hands around Ruulo’s thighs and pulls her down, filling her lungs with the scent of her, wrapping her lips around her clit and drawing her in.

Ruulo moans and trembles against her mouth, and Vaar lets out a voiceless sigh and puts all her focus to making her do that again.

There is a long slow touch to Vaar’s thigh: Hishnak. “Gorgeous,” she rumbles, her voice muffled to Vaar’s ears by Ruulo’s thighs. “You look so good sitting on her face, kitten.”

Ruulo laughs, her voice catching on her loss of control. Vaar can picture how it must look to Hishnak: Ruulo upright and arched over Vaar’s face, her beautiful hair in disarray, her trim form hidden by the chemise she’s still wearing, the roundness of her breasts and hips mere suggestions beneath the garment. She’ll be teasing her—keeping the working of Vaar’s mouth concealed by that fall of fabric, but otherwise so open and shameless in her reactions. Vaar is unsurprised when Hishnak’s grip tightens on her leg.

“You should fuck her,” Ruulo says. Her voice is high and breathless, and Vaar groans and redoubles her efforts, knowing she did that. “She’s—ah—she’s working so hard. She deserves that, don’t you think?”

Hishnak’s helpless answering laugh is too low for Vaar to hear, but she can feel it in the tremble of her fingers. Then her hand leaves Vaar’s thigh and her weight leaves the bed; Vaar thinks she can hear her digging through the trunk she keeps at the end of her bed, but it’s so hard to concentrate through the taste of Ruulo on her lips.

Ruulo moans and buckles against her, stroking her hand over Vaar’s arm. “Oh—oh yes, that’s it. You’re so good, Vaar. Hishnak’s going to make you feel so good.”

Vaar groans again and buries her tongue in Ruulo’s cunt.

Hishnak’s return is heralded by Vaar’s legs being forcibly pushed apart, her knees spread wide, so wide she can feel the strain in her inner thighs. The cool air teases against her, prickling against the slick wetness of her sex, and she whines again at how exposed she is—how visible she must be to Hishnak’s probing dark gaze. Hishnak strokes the soft skin of her thighs, circles her fingers around her entrance and rubs against her clit, and then Vaar feels the smooth shape of an ivory dildo parting her folds, and she nearly bucks as Hishnak pushes it deep into her.

“Oh—that’s beautiful,” Ruulo says. She grinds down against Vaar’s mouth, her movements taking on an urgent edge, and Vaar moans and swallows her down and arches her hips against Hishnak’s slow and relentless thrusts.

Ruulo comes on Vaar’s tongue, sudden as she always does, her whole body shuddering and jerking as she succumbs to it. Vaar grips her thighs near-frantically, desperate for her, dizzy from lack of air and from the pulse of Ruulo’s clit in her mouth. Hishnak twists the dildo inside her, timing her thrusts to the arch of Ruulo’s body, and Vaar is overcome, shaking, needing nothing but to be trapped between them for the rest of her life.

When Vaar’s touch abruptly becomes too much for her, Ruulo climbs off and collapses to the side, but she doesn’t move away, pinning Vaar’s arms and shoulders with her hands as she drinks in the measured way Hishnak is fucking her. Hishnak has kept her legs spread, the press of her knee serving to restrain her where her hand is otherwise occupied, and Vaar feels so terribly seen, so utterly beyond control, her entire being scraped raw and on display under her eyes and Ruulo’s.

“Come on, darling,” Hishnak says, low and throaty, her nails scraping against Vaar’s hip. “Come on. Right here. Let us watch you.”

She shifts her grip, pressing her thumb firmly against Vaar’s clit, and with a rough cry Vaar comes undone, entirely exposed and swept up in it.

She comes back to herself in a slow haze, want still surging through her like the tide. At her side, Ruulo is pressed close and stroking her hair, the light blue-green of her eyes swallowed up in the intensity of her focus. Between her legs, Hishnak withdraws the dildo and presses their hips together, the hot shape of her erection hard against Vaar’s pelvis.

“Hishnak,” she says, her voice cracked and desperate. “Hishnak, please.”

Hishnak does not respond in words. She only groans and bends her head to Vaar’s chest, reaches down between them to tug herself free from her trousers, and pushes into her, hard and deep and unhesitant.

She fucks Vaar rough and fast, their bodies as near as they can be, her arms wrapped around Vaar’s hips to pull her tight to her. Ruulo is close beside them both, still stroking Vaar’s hair one-handed; the other is between her own thighs, her ragged aroused breaths harsh against Vaar’s shoulder as she watches Hishnak thrust into her. Vaar is lost in the press of her form, her warm soft skin and barely restrained movements, the flex of Hishnak’s muscles under her hands, the spiralling pulse of heat between her legs, the scent of sex and their three bodies heavy in the air. She has become a creature of pure feeling, echoing sensation and gasping desperation, dragged under by the currents of desire.

At last a jolting shudder goes through Hishnak and she groans again, withdrawing from Vaar’s body and wrapping her hand around herself. Were she more focused, Vaar could have appreciated the necessity of it, but submerged as she is all she can do is whimper with the loss.

Ruulo saves her. “Shh,” she soothes, and kisses her deeply, and Vaar gratefully allows herself to sink again, even as Hishnak spills herself across her stomach and collapses against her body once more.

Ruulo keeps kissing her for a long time. Eventually Vaar begins to settle, settling back into the furs. Gradually she becomes aware of the way Hishnak is carding fingers through her hair: her braids have come unpinned in their exertions. At last she relaxes fully, and Ruulo pulls away, smiling brightly down at her with an inescapable softness in her eyes.

“Alright?” she says.

Vaar, grounding herself in the weight of Hishnak’s body on hers, nods and closes her eyes.

Ruulo kisses her forehead, and then Vaar feels her weight spring from the bed. “I’m going to go get the wine,” she says—Vaar can tell from the angle of her voice that this is directed not to her but to Hishnak. “Do you want anything?”

“Bring the tafl board,” Hishnak says. Her voice is still a bit slow, and she hasn’t moved her head from its place against Vaar’s collar. Neither she nor Vaar has ever been as energetic as Ruulo always seems to be after sex.

Ruulo hums agreement, and then her footsteps depart the bedroom—leaving Hishnak to curl protectively around Vaar for the precious few minutes of peace she needs to begin reassembling herself. By the time she returns, Vaar has remembered how to fit into her own body again.

Ruulo busies herself setting up the game on the other side of the bed while Hishnak rises and takes the cloth from the washbasin to clean both her own body and Vaar’s. Then she tucks herself back into her trousers and pulls on a shirt—though comfortable being bared during sex, she prefers otherwise to keep her body covered—and seats herself across the board from Ruulo.

Ruulo has come to expect it, just as she has come to expect Vaar to need some time to swim back to herself afterwards. She passes Hishnak the wine without comment and places the last of the pieces on the board. “Do you want to play attackers or defenders?”

Hishnak takes a swig directly from the bottle. “Attackers,” she says, and there is the click of stone on wood as she moves her first piece.

They play together, passing the wine back and forth as they do, the teasing competitiveness of their conversation giving Vaar a fixed point to focus on. Hishnak keeps her hand on Vaar’s calf as the game unfolds, and that, too, gives her something to ground herself on, an anchor as she drifts.

“Shit,” Hishnak says, as Ruulo captures one of the attacking pieces and removes it from the board.

“Didn’t you tell me you were the _Salmon_’s best tafl player?” Ruulo says.

“Not my fault you’re so distracting, kitten.”

Hishnak is not the best tafl player on Vaar’s ship: that’s Eruuk, who is also her best lookout.

“Ah, I see,” Ruulo says a few minutes later, the amusement still strong in her voice, as Hishnak takes one of her defenders from the board. “You were luring me into a false sense of security.”

“Obviously.”

They play in silence for another few minutes, Hishnak’s thumb brushing gently against Vaar’s leg.

“Opening,” Ruulo says.

“Fuck you,” Hishnak replies without heat, moving another piece to block Ruulo’s win.

There is a warmth blooming in Vaar’s throat. Sometimes it seems impossible to her that Ruulo hasn’t been part of their lives for so much longer than she has. She has fit herself seamlessly into their partnership in a way that no one else could ever manage: though Hishnak and Vaar have brought new lovers into their bed before, there has never been one who seems to belong as she does, who is so easy for them to love, who so plainly loves them back both together and alone. With their other shared lovers, the understanding had always been that they would leave afterward, would allow Vaar the privacy to tuck her emotions back into her skin while Hishnak kept herself quietly nearby. With Ruulo, Vaar would no more wish her to silently slip off than she would Hishnak—and now the two of them have each other to keep company with while they wait for her to resurface.

Vaar shifts now, pushing herself slowly upright. Hishnak, absorbed in the game, just rubs her calf once more before withdrawing her hand; Ruulo meets her eyes with a quick smile and passes her the wine. Vaar takes a long sip, revelling in the simple pleasure of the liquid rolling over her tongue, and then she sets the bottle down and begins picking the braids from her crown. By the time she has finished, her black hair falling in rippling waves to the small of her back, both Ruulo and Hishnak are surreptitiously watching her.

Vaar smiles minutely. “Pay attention,” she says, and leans over to move one of Ruulo’s pieces, neatly capturing one of the attackers.

Hishnak gives her a look of woebegone betrayal; Ruulo bites her lip on a giggle. “Fine, you can take over,” she says, and presses a kiss to Vaar’s cheek. “I’m going to let in a little air.”

Vaar settles herself across the board from Hishnak as Ruulo hops up to go to the window. Hishnak’s eyes are soft when they meet hers, as deep and dark as the fathomless seas.

“All good?” she says.

“Perfect,” Vaar says honestly.

“Oh!” Ruulo exclaims, from across the room. She turns back from the window to look at them, a chill breeze pressing her chemise against her body, her smile dazzling. “It’s stopped snowing! The stars are out.”

Vaar’s voice is perfectly flat as she says, “You are welcome to stay for the next three days regardless.”

“Oh, I’ll just bet,” Hishnak drawls, to Ruulo’s silvery laughter, and Vaar finds herself content.

**Author's Note:**

> I'm on [twitter](https://twitter.com/october_burns). I have a [blog](https://octoberburns.wordpress.com/). Come chat writing and book recs with me! And if you like my stories, I'd love it if you'd help support my work.


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